Conclusion

Summary

THE FOCUS OF THIS BOOK HAS BEEN literary encounters between Turkish and German writers and theater intellectuals. The discussion began in the 1950s with the Erlangen student theater festival, which preceded the labor recruitment contract between Turkey and Germany in 1961 that marked the beginning of large-scale Turkish (labor) immigration to West Germany. In this book I have uncovered the significant influence of Turkish cultural-political debates and literary practices on German cultural traditions in the decades since the Second World War, showing how international collaboration and exchange focusing on Brecht proved central for negotiations of the relationship between aesthetics and politics in the German and Turkish public spheres. The Turkish Brecht reception, as the first chapter illuminated, drew from a variety of intersecting discourses and practices, on the national and international level, that thought beyond Cold War divisions, and consulted Brechtian theory and practice as it took shape in both East and West German institutions. Turkish dramatists and directors, I argued there, emphasized the necessity of adapting Brechtian concepts to address national concerns as well as political and historical events, and of placing them in dialogue with Turkish aesthetic traditions and the Turkish literary left.

Even as I explored the significance of the Turkish archive for Turkish- German and German studies, my analysis also revealed its continued relevance for studying the work that prominent Turkish-German writers Aras Ören and Emine Sevgi Özdamar wrote after their emigration to Germany. Furthermore, my analysis highlighted the cultural effects of Turkish immigration and the inscription of Turkish subjects into German discourses of working-class culture and literary politics beyond ethnicity and nationality in divided Germany. Ören's involvement in leftist artist circles foregrounded the collaboration between intellectuals and the working class. With Brecht's work at their very center, these debates focused on the intersection between aesthetics and politics. Ören introduced Turkish workers into German discourses on labor protest and working-class solidarity, presenting them as catalysts for change, providing a counter-perspective to predominant presentations of Turks as mute others in the German public. His preoccupation with Brecht, as I have illustrated, predated his move to West Berlin in 1969 and was rooted in his theater career. This career included Ören's work with the Gençlik Tiyatrosu ensemble, his participation in the Erlangen and Istanbul theater festivals, and his activities as a member of the Neue Buhne Frankfurt, all important venues.